Labyrinth Flowers Review: A Bouquet of Clichés Pretending to Smell Unique

Hello everyone. Gather around, because today we’re diving into Labyrinth Flowers, a game whose name sounds like it should be sold as potpourri at a medieval craft fair instead of being marketed as a role-playing adventure. Scheduled for release in August 2025, it promises dungeons, guilds, and riddles “etched in your memory.” Which, let’s be clear, sounds less like epic fantasy and more like suffering from chronic migraines. But let’s peel away the petals and look at what this game is actually offering, because the marketing pitch alone is already setting off more red flags than a parade in Beijing.

The Story: Déjà Vu in Dungeon Form

Let me summarize the narrative bombshell here: you’re an adventurer, there’s a dungeon, there’s a riddle etched in your memory, and paradise awaits. Wow. Riveting. What we’re actually being spoon-fed is the same reheated broth that’s been served in nearly every dungeon crawler since 1995. The adventurers’ guild evaluates you, and instead of sending you away for not filling out the right TPS report, they give you a “tantalizing proposal.” Forgive me if I don’t swoon.

It feels like they set out to write Tolkien-inspired grandeur, and accidentally instead wrote the back of a cereal box. No surprise, given that this is yet another JRPG-style game that wants to lean into archetypes rather than inventing anything new. It’s like déjà vu got drunk, wandered into the wrong neighborhood, and decided to stay there.

Gameplay: Two Hours Till Credits, or Until You Nod Off

Let’s start with the winning feature-“multi-choice, single-ending with 2+ hours till credits.” That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Two hours till credits? I’ve had longer visits at a doctor’s waiting room flipping through outdated magazines, and at least there, the characters (the human patients) felt more alive and unpredictable. Having choices with only one ending is about as exciting as a hospital blood test: yes, they ask you to pick an arm, but either way, you still get jabbed and bleed into the same damn vial.

Dungeon crawlers thrive on challenge, replayability, and discovering something new. What this offers, by contrast, is all the excitement of running through a hospital corridor and finding that every single door is locked-except one, and it leads you into a broom closet with a damp mop.

Characters: A Parade of Copy-Paste Archetypes

Ah, now we get to the dozen-strong roster of characters, each conjured out of the JRPG cookie-cutter factory and sprinkled lightly with developer seasoning to give the illusion of uniqueness. Let’s consult the exhibit, shall we?

• Paladin: High stamina, holy abilities, likes hitting things. Groundbreaking, except it isn’t.
• Witch: Fast, throws out ice spells, and can put enemies to bed. I imagine she’d be perfect at children’s story hour.
• Priestess: Heals allies and whacks things with a mace. Because clearly a blunt instrument is the divine choice of weaponry.
• Scout: Hide, stab, sneak. Repeat endlessly until nausea sets in.
• Monk: Runs around doing kung fu dances that inexplicably restore MP. Truly, martial arts gyms have been nerfing this for years, apparently to maintain balance.
• Shamaness: Debuffs enemies’ armor. Think of her as your local curses-and-hexes specialist, brought to you straight from bargain-bin folklore.
• Sniper: Strong bow attacks, but with armor made of paper. Basically a glass cannon waiting to shatter in your hands.
• Healer: The mandatory “walking medkit” in any RPG. She heals, and that’s about it, unless you’re keen on practicing selective pacifism.
• Dancer: Boosts allies with interpretive Boogie Nights. An endearing touch of absurdity, though I half expect her to whip out a neon disco ball.
• Alchemist: Requires consumable items to do literally anything. Essentially a shop clerk who followed you into the dungeon and started nitpicking materials mid-fight.
• Rune Knight: Magic plus sword. Congratulations, you have invented diet sorceress with extra polish.
• Sorceress: Ice spells, strength buffs, and absolutely nothing that we didn’t already see in ten other RPGs within the last decade.

This whole cast doesn’t feel like a dynamic party of personalities, but rather like you picked up a set of abandoned Dungeons & Dragons character sheets from a high school tabletop club and scanned them into a video game.

Mature Content: Crude Humor and Token Warnings

The developers proudly note that the game contains some crude humor and crass language, but all love interests are “18 and older.” Well done, moral crusaders. They’ve managed to put a content descriptor on something that otherwise sounds as edgy as a spoon. If “occasional crude humor” is the highlight of your game, I worry this entire dungeon experience depends entirely on a fart joke to carry it through the final boss battle.

System Requirements: The Final Insult

The system requirements are, dare I say, insulting. Windows 10 or 11, an i3 processor, 8GB RAM, and “OpenGL VRAM 1 GB or more.” That’s it. The developers aren’t pushing graphical boundaries. They’re not innovating systems. They just want your PC to be slightly better than a toaster. And maybe that’s fine for a game that might barely clock in at two hours of runtime-it makes sense, like checking into an ER and being told you’re healthy enough to go home before they’ve even taken your temperature.

Final Diagnosis: At Best, Forgettable

If I were to slap a medical label on Labyrinth Flowers, it would be “Acute Case of RPG Fatigue.” Symptoms include predictability, loss of player engagement, and aggressively derivative character archetypes. Can it be treated? Maybe-with a defibrillator-level shock of original design, or at the very least some mechanic that makes it stand out from a bargain bin of decade-old games. Without that, this is not an RPG you’ll remember. It’s one you’ll uninstall, forget, and wonder weeks later why it ever sprouted into your Steam library.

Overall, Labyrinth Flowers is the gaming equivalent of buying a mystery gacha, only to roll the same bland Paladin you’ve pulled ten times before. It takes all the old tricks, mashes them into a bundle, and pretends the result is fresh. Unless you’re utterly starved for dungeon crawlers or have an unhealthy fetish for archetypes, there is simply nothing here to justify excitement.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.

Article Source: Labyrinth Flowers, https://store.steampowered.com/app/2939770/Labyrinth_Flowers/